I write this first as a Jew.

Then as a Jerusalemite.

And also as a Californian.

I was raised in a home where the idea of a Jewish homeland was not an abstraction but a living inheritance — something my family believed in deeply and proudly. The miracle of Israel was not theoretical. It was something we celebrated around the dinner table.

I was also raised proudly in the Democratic Party.

For most of my life, those identities were not in tension with one another. In fact, they felt deeply aligned. Liberal democracy, civil rights, human dignity, the belief that all people are created in the image of God — these were not competing values. They were part of the same moral universe.

I am also fiercely protective of my family — the Jewish people. Which is why I hesitate to even write this. But I also know that sometimes we have to have hard conversations before things fester and corrupt.

Love that refuses self-reflection is not love. It is denial.

And denial has never served the Jewish people well.

Our entire intellectual tradition is built on argument — on wrestling with God, with text, with each other. The pages of the Talmud are not neat columns of agreement but margins filled with dissent, counterarguments, and minority opinions preserved for eternity.

Not because disagreement weakens us.

Because it keeps us honest.

Because it keeps us alive.

Jewish tradition gives a name to this kind of disagreement: machloket l’shem shamayim — an argument for the sake of heaven. The Talmud praises the fierce debates between Hillel and Shammai, whose arguments endured precisely because they were rooted in the sincere pursuit of truth. In Jewish life, moral clarity has never come from silence, but from principled debate. It is one of the ways Jewish civilization has always refined its moral compass.

So when difficult questions arise about Israel — about power, governance, and the gap that sometimes opens between our ideals and our reality — silence does not protect us.

Which is why recent developments in American political discourse about Israel trouble me.

There is a good chance that Gavin Newsom could be a serious contender for president of the United States. His words matter.

And his recent statement invoking the........

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